Making Social Connections

"Can you come to school and help me find a friend to play with, Mom?" asked my son the other day. It was heartwrenching to hear the innocence in his voice asking for help in an area where he will have to sink or swim on his own for most of his life. Staff at school tells me that he seems to be fine when he is with others. He does not mind company around him, they said. He responds when someone comes and asks him about what he is doing. He brings his own toy train with him and pulls and pushes it in the sand. Meanwhile, he is in the midst of intense social and verbal interactions among his peers swilrling all around him at recess. I can just imagine the speed with which those activities and topics of conversation change. While he is still trying to understand the first rule of a game, it's over and the players have moved on to another one. This time it could be a new one, completely made up by the group, with rapidly changing players, as they proceed with the game. How can he keep up with that? How does anyone keep up with that? But they do and they move on. But how does someone with difficulty in understanding expressions, body language, complex language arrangements and ideas that seem unconnected that yet makes sense to others, learn to make those social connections that all human beings need. The most I can do for him at home is to have one of his classmates (I can't really say friends, because they are not, not yet anyway in the truest sense of the word) come over to our home and practice the script on make how to make friends. I imagine it would help immensely if schools take this aspect of the development need of children with autism seriously and actively pursue it by helping them make connections with their peers on school grounds. But that's not going to happen and I can't be there teaching him the steps of making those social advances because that would be against school policy, which then leaves me to my own devices to come up with a plan to help my son make that connection with another individual. I hope one day he will come home and tell me that he would like to go to school the next day because his friend would be waiting to play with him. Ahh, wistful thinking but who knows, it might happen and sooner than later.